One heritage home a week is being lost in Greater Victoria, says the head of the Hallmark Society.

Nick Russell, president of the group dedicated to preserving historic homes in Greater Victoria, said developers are snapping up large properties with small houses on them, demolishing the houses and putting up new homes that don't fit with the neighbourhoods.

I challenge Nick Russell to list the 52 heritage homes that were torn down last year. It just did not happen.

Also what is completely missed by this article is that every street in Victoria is already made up of houses from different times or ones that have been adapted over the years. That is one of the things that makes cities great.

"We have to look at entire streetscapes and say 'this is a wonderful street that needs to be kept as a consistent, attractive street.'"

The problem is, you'd never get people to agree on what makes the street wonderful. And you'd get all sorts of people arguing for huge setbacks and such, even where huge setbacks and such are inconsistent with what's already there.

Ah yes, a lovely shot of the parking lot at my old stomping grounds, Good Acre Towers in James Bay. Thanks for the memory.

Well do I recall the outcry of the James Bay Community Asscoiation at the prospect of condos in place of that old covered parking area - imagine! NEW buildings....CONDOS no less....in place of that crappy old (heritage?!) structure?!? Well not on OUR watch, tut tut!

Of course the death blow to the entire proposal was the 12 or 14 storey condo envisioned to have been built on the corner of Toronto/Douglas Streets. My GOD...FOURTEEN whole, entire stories? Why that would be a SKYSCRAPER of monolithic proportion!!! In "historic" James Bay you say?!? Harrumph....much huffing and puffing, accompanied by a serious rise in blood pressure.....<sigh>

I loved living in the proximity to Beacon Hill Park and the waterfront. Other than that I certainly don't miss the utter anal retentiveness of that (JBNEA) organization. No doubt Toronto Street, and quite possibly the parking structure in the picture- oh hell's bell's just include the entire Good Acre parking lot and be done with it - will one day receive the heritage designation they so richly deserve....

Wasn't it a rental apartment building that was proposed for that parking lot?

Edit: Yep. That was back during the rental crisis. Rather inane idea, to propose large new rental apartment buildings during a rental crisis.

Once-shunned tower projects back on table for rezoningTimes Colonist January 13, 2005

A controversial proposal to build 16-storey and 12-storey apartment towers in James Bay has been revived despite overwhelming opposition from neighbouring residents.

Quadra Pacific Properties and Associated Building Credits have applied for rezoning applications to be considered by Victoria council this morning.

Associated wants to build 105 rental apartments in a 16-storey block and 16 townhouses at 350-360 Douglas St. Quadra Pacific is proposing a 113-unit tower at 415-435 Michigan St.

Both projects were rejected by all but three of 120 people attending a community meeting last May.

Ross Sinclair, who lives nearby at 624 Avalon St., is outraged that the proposals have resurfaced, especially because rezoning notices appeared during the Christmas holidays when they might have been overlooked.

"The community has already nixed this once," Sinclair said, adding that the projects do not conform to the James Bay neighbourhood plan.

Planning staff has recommended both proposals be rejected. However, consultant Mark Johnston, a former Esquimalt and Victoria city hall administrator, has argued rental apartments are badly needed. Rental units have not been built in James Bay area since the 1970s.

City council rejects second application for James Bay towersTimes ColonistJanuary 14, 2005

Victoria council showed little appetite Thursday for new residential towers in James Bay when it rejected two proposals for apartment buildings.

Reg Stewart and his family wanted to build the first private-sector rental accommodation in the neighbourhood since the 1970s. However, council rejected rezoning applications by companies linked to the family for 16-storey and 12-storey towers opposed by most neighbouring residents.

The proposals at 350-360 Douglas St. and 415-435 Michigan St. did not comply with planning policies for James Bay, already the densest neighbourhood in the city.

Mark Johnston, a consultant and former city administrator representing the Stewarts, said the projects would provide badly needed rental accommodation for the city.

The proposed towers would have gone up next to the existing buildings developed by the Stewarts several decades ago -- the Goodacre Towers, Regent Towers and Charter House buildings. Their proposal also offered $400,000 for the James Bay New Horizons seniors centre for a food-services facility.

The city planning department said this fell way short of the $3-million cash benefit required under the city's "density bonus" policy. This policy sets a value for density approved beyond what zoning rules normally allow.

Mayor Alan Lowe said while the city needs more rental accommodation, the proposals were "too big and too dense." Towers built in the 1970s could no longer serve as the model for James Bay, he indicated.

Coun. Pamela Madoff said that neighbourhood was effectively "downzoned" in the 1970s after residents complained about too many tall buildings in the precinct that spreads south of the legislature buildings.

Yep, it could have been; I seem to recall it was a condo but it may well have been an apartment.

Of course :height: was THE issue, as it always is in Victoria, especially in James Bay. Nothing else, including intelligent, well thought out and above all progressive design, is ever considered. There are only ever 3 considerations especially in James Bay, namely Height....Height and, oh yes...Height. Even worse Aastra if it was in fact a rental proposal because after all, Victoria has such an excess of rental accomodation, right?

Learn about Victoria, B.C.Ross Crockford speaks at the Clallam County Historical Society’s History Tales at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 2, in the Port Angeles City Council Chambers, 321 E. Fifth St., Port Angeles. The event is free.Crockford gives an overview of Victoria, British Columbia’s development and concerns from its founding to the present, the city as a tourist destination and some of the people who have passed through.A former trial lawyer, he started working at The Prague Post, an English-language newspaper in eastern Europe, in the 1990s.Call 452-2662.

He was the editor in the early 1990s - it was what he was doing for a living when he sort of crashed a party of mine in London. Very popular man with all the English women in my office, each time I had a party after that they all asked if he was coming to the party.

There are some of us that think Roberts House, at 620 Toronto St., an example of the "brut" school of architecture, and the earlier duplex on the property, designed by Peter Cotton, should also be designated as good examples of mid-60s contemporary architecture. There are a number of small art deco houses, such as the one on the SW corner of Government and Merrifield, designed for its location, with a corner entrance, that should be designated. I would love to own that house. Similarly, the Sussex Bldg was designed to compliment the previously lack-lustre, but increasingly rare example of a corner-oriented hotel (the Sussex Hotel). I think that the end result on that site, with the new courtyard and its interesting entrance, has created something even better than what used to be on the site. The heavily lacquered plywood panelled lobby of the Sussex Hotel was quite something. I wonder if anyone managed to salvage the wood....

The one heritage streetscape currently designated in James Bay is Avalon St., and I think it is well worth it.

Victoria's beauty and heritage will be the highlight of a summer architectural walking tour program.

Six guided tours, hosted by the Architectural institute of B.C., will showcase the Inner Harbour, Fort Victoria, Old Town and Chinatown, James Bay and religious as well as 1920s art decor and moderne architecture.

The future of Chinatown: Would a redevelopment proposal allow it to flourish, or tarnish its heritage?By Jack Knox, Times Colonist August 20, 2011

The irony of the Chinatown heritage hullabaloo is that it's the non-Chinese neighbours who are leading the fuss.

Which leads to the question: What does Victoria want its Chinatown to be, anyway? Historically accurate museum? Tourist magnet? Cultural hothouse?

At the centre of it all is a redevelopment proposal that would, depending on your perspective, either breathe authenticity into the neighbourhood or rob it of the same.

The Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association wants to renovate a cluster of crumbling two-and three-storey heritage buildings, including the association's 127-year-old headquarters at 540 Pandora Ave. and a couple of others on the southwest side of Fan Tan Alley.